"Today, the secretary-general welcomes the state of Iraq back into the family of independent and sovereign nations," said a United Nations statement.

In the gap between those two statements, you can see the world of difference that lies between the U.S. and the U.N. in approaching the worst troubles of our time. For America, and Mr. Bush, the struggles now upon us are basically about freedom, and rule of, by and for the people. For the U.N., and Mr. Annan, it is all about paternalism, consensus, family. And I'm sorry to say that the family that springs first to mind has a lot less to do with Gramps, Grandma and the kids than with the Mafia clan of TV fiction fame, the Sopranos. And not just because both families claim tax-free status for their rackets.

Mr. Annan was speaking metaphorically, of course, referring to the U.N.'s grand gathering of 191 member states. But he did bring to my mind a vision of what you'd find, were you to drop by the U.N. family manor, roam the halls, peer into the parlors and start opening doors, not to mention closets.

In the message broadcast by Al-Jazeera television on 14 February 2003, Osama Bin Laden said: "The interests of Muslims coincide with the interests of the socialists in the war against the crusaders." After the bomb attack in Spain (14 March 2004), these words seemed almost prophetic.

When it comes to foreign policy, opinion polls as well as a sampling of Hollywood blockbusters show that Americans see themselves as the good sheriff, selflessly sorting out a strange and unpredictable world. But as they chew over the congressional report on 9/11, they are clearly struggling to come to terms with the reality of their latest foreign adventure.

In contrast, the French foreign ministry is unambiguous about its role: France is the birthplace of human rights and the cradle of the Enlightenment. Thanks to giants such as Voltaire, France inspired others - for example, in the United States - to liberate themselves from oppressive, corrupt aristocratic elites.

So much for self-image: in practice, the French are running the cash registers in a Wild West whorehouse. Not only do the French, like Edith Piaf, regret nothing: their determination to keep their arms exports booming pushes them to sidestep their own laws, not to mention the international conventions they have signed. While all countries tend to pursue a foreign policy based on self-interest, the French have a network of arms salesmen and military advisers working in concert within their perceived spheres of influence to supply mass murderers.

Maybe the French believe that human rights in China are improving. They would do well to consider the British manufacturer who supplies supermarkets with salads, and who sourced walnuts from China. He received customer complaints from people who had found human teeth in their food. Further investigation revealed that the walnuts were being cracked open by Chinese political prisoners using their teeth.

Until now, the only evidence of Iraq's alleged attempts to buy uranium from Niger had turned out to be a forgery. In October 2002, documents were handed to the US embassy in Rome that appeared to be correspondence between Niger and Iraqi officials.

When the US State Department later passed the documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, they were found to be fake. US officials have subsequently distanced themselves from the entire notion that Iraq was seeking buy uranium from Niger.

However, European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq.

These intelligence officials now say the forged documents appear to have been part of a "scam", and the actual intelligence showing discussion of uranium supply has been ignored.

The FT has now learnt that three European intelligence services were aware of possible illicit trade in uranium from Niger between 1999 and 2001. Human intelligence gathered in Italy and Africa more than three years before the Iraq war had shown Niger officials referring to possible illicit uranium deals with at least five countries, including Iraq.

This intelligence provided clues about plans by Libya and Iran to develop their undeclared nuclear programmes. Niger officials were also discussing sales to North Korea and China of uranium ore or the "yellow cake" refined from it: the raw materials that can be progressively enriched to make nuclear bombs.

The raw intelligence on the negotiations included indications that Libya was investing in Niger's uranium industry to prop it up at a time when demand had fallen, and that sales to Iraq were just a part of the clandestine export plan. These secret exports would allow countries with undeclared nuclear programmes to build up uranium stockpiles.

One nuclear counter-proliferation expert told the FT: "If I am going to make a bomb, I am not going to use the uranium that I have declared. I am going to use what I acquire clandestinely, if I am going to keep the programme hidden."

[...] When the intelligence gathered in 1999-2001 was thrown into the diplomatic maelstrom that preceded the US-led invasion of Iraq, it took on new significance. Several services contributed to the picture.

The Italians, looking for corroboration but lacking the global reach of the CIA or the UK intelligence service MI6, passed information to the US in 2001 and to the UK in 2002.

The UK eavesdropping centre GCHQ had intercepted communications suggesting Iraq was seeking clandestine uranium supplies, as had the French intelligence service.

The Italian intelligence was not incorporated in detail into the assessments of the CIA, which seeks to use such information only when it is gathered from its own sources rather than as a result of liaison with foreign intelligence services. But five months after receiving it, the US sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to assess the credibility of separate US intelligence information that suggested Iraq had approached Niger.

Mr Wilson was critical of the Bush administration's use of secret intelligence, and has since charged that the White House sought to intimidate him by leaking the identity of his wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent.

But Mr Wilson also stated in his account of the visit that Mohamed Sayeed al-Sahaf, Iraq's former information minister, was identified to him by a Niger official as having sought to discuss trade with Niger.

As Niger's other main export is goats, some intelligence officials have surmised uranium was what Mr Sahaf was referring to.

These claims support the assertion made in the British government dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programme in September 2002 that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from an African country, confirmed later as Niger. George W. Bush, US president, referred to the issue in his State of the Union address in January 2003.

The claim that the illicit export of uranium was under discussion was widely dismissed when letters referring to the sales - apparently sent by a Nigerien official to a senior official in Saddam Hussein's regime - were proved by the International Atomic Energy Agency to be forgeries. This embarrassed the US and led the administration to reverse its earlier claim.

But European intelligence officials have for the first time confirmed that information provided by human intelligence sources during an operation mounted in Europe and Africa produced sufficient evidence for them to believe that Niger was the centre of a clandestine international trade in uranium.

But perhaps the most telling sign is what you could call the "refugee indicator" of success. Last week, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, reported that the number of refugees worldwide had dropped to its lowest level in a decade, falling by 18 per cent to just over 17 million.

From the first quarter of last year to the first quarter this year, there was a 25 per cent drop in the number of people seeking political asylum in the developed nations, The Boston Globe reported. That's mostly because people are now less likely to flee Afghanistan and Iraq.

The UNHCR also found 81 per cent fewer Iraqis claimed asylum this year than last year, and is now preparing for the return of more than half a million Iraqis. "Nearly 5 million people ... over the past few years have been able to either go home or to find a new place to rebuild their lives," Lubbers told the BBC. "For them, these dry statistics reflect a special reality: the end of long years in exile and the start of a new life with renewed hope for the future."

More than half a million people also returned to Afghanistan last year, something Lubbers said was "phenomenal [and] underscores the benefits of sustained international attention". International attention as in wiping out the Taliban, and removing Saddam.

Refugees have registered their approval by voting with their feet. But there must be a conspiracy theory to explain it away.

As we neared three years of fighting in World War II, Patton was stalled near Germany for want of gas, V-2 rockets began raining down on England, and we were fighting to take the Marianas in preparation for future B-29 bases. In comparison, what exactly is our current status in this, our confusing third year of war against Islamic fascists and their autocratic sponsors?

[...] We are winning the military war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The terrorists are on the run. And slowly, even ineptly, we are achieving our political goals of democratic reform in once-awful places. Thirty years of genocide, vast forced transfers of whole peoples, the desecration of entire landscapes, a ruined infrastructure, and a brutalized and demoralized civilian psyche are being remedied, often under fire. All this and more has been achieved at the price of political turmoil, deep divisions in the West — here and abroad — and the emergence of a strong minority, led by mostly elites, who simply wish it all to fail.

Whether this influential, snarling minority — so prominent in the media, on campuses, in government, and in the arts — succeeds in turning victory into defeat is open to question. Right now the matter rests on the nerve of a half-dozen in Washington who are daily slandered (Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz), and with brilliant and courageous soldiers in the field. They are fighting desperately against the always-ticking clock of American impatience, and are forced to confront an Orwellian world in which their battle sacrifice is ignored or deprecated while killing a vicious enemy is tantamount to murder.

Did the Times expect a signing ceremony? What next? "The FBI's organized crime unit concluded today that there probably is no Mafia because the evidence does not describe any formal alliance between shadowy figures who, Vice President Dick Cheney claims, refer to themselves as 'Gambinos' and 'Bonannos'...."

The Times has been against the Iraq war from the start. Its relentless propaganda, in conjunction with its media allies, has taken a sizable toll. President Bush has taken a ratings hit, and a poll out this morning suggests that a slim majority of Americans now believes the war was a mistake. But that could turn around in a heartbeat. No one is more aware than the "newspaper of record" that if the American people become convinced Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were in cahoots, the national perception of the necessity for this war will drastically change, and the president's reelection will be a virtual lock.

That's what this is about. And who knows what else the Times is not telling us?

viernes, junio 25, 2004

Insurgents in Iraq are seeking chemical arms and expertise left over from the regime of Saddam Hussein for possible use against U.S. and allied troops, an intelligence official in Iraq said yesterday.

Charles Deulfer [sic - el apellido correcto es Duelfer -- F.A.], the head of the CIA weapons inspection team, also said in a television interview that weapons searchers so far have found as many as a dozen chemical-filled bombs.

[...] On the chemical munitions, Mr. Deulfer, who replaced David Kay as the head of the Iraq Survey Group earlier this year, said that the group has uncovered 10 to 12 bombs filled with blistering mustard gas or the nerve agent sarin.
"We're not sure how many more are out there that haven't been found, but we've found 10 or 12 sarin and mustard rounds," he said. "I'm reluctant to judge what that means at this point, but there's other aspects of the program which we still have to flush out."

[...] Officials said the chemical munitions were probably stored with conventional arms in some of the thousands of weapons depots located throughout Iraq. Military officials have uncovered some 8,700 weapons depots and continue to find new ones, and estimate that the weapons depots in Iraq contain between 650,000 and 1 million tons of arms.

The dumps are believed to be arming the anticoalition insurgency as former regime elements and terrorists join forces in conducting attacks.

Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990's were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed document obtained by the Americans in Iraq.

American officials described the document as an internal report by the Iraqi intelligence service detailing efforts to seek cooperation with several Saudi opposition groups, including Mr. bin Laden's organization, before Al Qaeda had become a full-fledged terrorist organization. He was based in Sudan from 1992 to 1996, when that country forced him to leave and he took refuge in Afghanistan.

After months of criticizing President Bush for failing to attract international support for the U.S. mission in Iraq, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) shifted his tone yesterday, putting NATO nations on notice that the time has come for them to contribute military forces to help secure the country as a new government takes power.

Kerry did not absolve the administration of responsibility for other nations' reluctance to participate in the Iraq mission, but said it was long past time for them to withhold support, given shifts in U.S. policy that have brought a more active role by the United Nations.

"In light of the failed diplomacy of the Bush administration, that reluctance is not surprising," he said in a statement issued while campaigning in California. "But now is the time that our allies must join the effort to support Iraq's transition. The NATO summit is the perfect opportunity for them to demonstrate their commitment to the new U.N. resolution."

Kerry urged the administration to invite Iraq's interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to the NATO summit in Istanbul next week as a way to put pressure on other nations to send troops to help secure Iraq's borders and safeguard the United Nations' mission.

He said Allawi's presence would challenge NATO countries to respond "to an appeal from the legitimate representative of the Iraqi people" and called the summit "a clear test of their [NATO's] resolve and a clear test of ours."

The first survey since the new government was announced by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi about three weeks ago showed that 68 percent of Iraqis have confidence in their new leaders. The numbers are in stark contrast to widespread disillusionment with the previous Iraqi Governing Council, which was made up of 25 members picked by the United States and which served as the Iraqi partner to the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. Only 28 percent of Iraqis backed the council when it was dissolved last month, according to a similar poll in May.

[...] There had been particular concern in Baghdad and Washington that Allawi's many years in exile before Hussein was ousted and his long-standing association with the CIA would undermine his credibility.

But 73 percent of Iraqis polled approved of Allawi to lead the new government, 84 percent approved of President Ghazi Yawar and almost two-thirds backed the new Cabinet. These impressive showings indicate that the new leaders have support spanning ethnic and religious groups, U.S. officials said.

"What comes across in the poll and what we've sensed for a while is that Iraqis remain open-minded about the new government," a senior coalition official in Baghdad said in an interview.

Four out of every five Iraqis expected that the new government will "make things better" for Iraq after the handover, with 10 percent expecting the situation to remain the same and 7 percent anticipating a decline, the poll shows.

[...] In a sign that Iraqis are more optimistic generally about their future after the occupation ends, two-thirds of Iraqis believed the first democratic elections for a new national assembly -- tentatively set for December or January -- will be free and fair, the survey shows.

Despite the growing number of attacks on Iraqi security forces, including several yesterday, public confidence in the new police and army has reached new highs, the poll shows. Seventy percent of Iraqis polled supported the new army, and 82 percent supported the police.

WHAT a way to lose a war. Two stories this week prove we'd rather shoot our own leaders than admit we have enemies who would, literally, cut our throats.

[...] This week also saw the release of two interim reports by the commission US President George W. Bush set up to investigate al-Qaida's September 11 attacks. In a little-reported passage, they warn: "Al-Qaida remains extremely interested in conducting chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attacks."

It had tried to buy uranium, the reports said, and had "accurate information" on a radiological bomb. It had also been "making advances in its ability to produce anthrax", and experts believed "the trend towards attacks intended to cause ever-higher casualties will continue".

This spectre, of course, is what drove us to invade Iraq. Not only did Saddam house and help terrorists, including Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, Palestinian suicide bombers and a bomb-maker of the 1993 World Trade Centre attack, but his scientists worked on chemical and biological weapons up until the war, as the Iraq Survey Group now confirms. The day would surely come when Saddam's weapons and the terrorists who wanted them finally met.

This is what Bush, Britain's Tony Blair and our John Howard warned of. But now this history is being shamelessly rewritten in the media.

This week's 9/11 commission reports also said Saddam approached al-Qaida at least three times when it was based in Sudan, and again, it seems, when it was in Afghanistan.

Al-Qaida boss Osama bin Laden asked for training camps and weapons, but, the reports claim, "Iraq apparently never responded", and the talks "do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship", although at least one Iraqi terrorist group did join his "broader Islamic army".

The reports for some reason don't discuss other reported links between Iraq and al-Qaida, but cautiously conclude: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida co-operated on attacks against the United States."

So there were links between Saddam and al-Qaida, not to mention other terrorists, but no proof (yet) of active collaboration or co-operation in the September 11 attacks.

Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission Lee Hamilton blasted the mainstream press yesterday for distorting the Commission's findings on links between Iraq and al-Qaida, saying those findings actually support Bush administration contentions.

"The sharp differences that the press has drawn [between the White House and the Commission] are not that apparent to me," Hamilton told the Associated Press, a day after insisting that his probe uncovered "all kinds" of connections between Osama bin Laden's terror network and Iraq.

Hamilton's comments followed a deluge of mainstream reports falsely claiming that the 9/11 Commission had discredited the Bush administration's claim of longstanding links between Baghdad and bin Laden.
But the Indiana Democrat said the press accounts were flat-out wrong.

"There are all kinds of ties," he told PBS's "The News Hour" late Wednesday, in comments that establishment journalists have refused to report.

"There are all kinds of connections. And it may very well have been that Osama bin Laden or some of his lieutenants met at some time with Saddam Hussein's lieutenants."

sábado, junio 19, 2004

Sometimes in the unscripted moments of a campaign, when the handlers are away, a candidate shows his true nature. Earlier this month, Andres Oppenheimer of The Miami Herald asked John Kerry what he thought of something called the Varela Project. Kerry said it was "counterproductive." It's necessary to try other approaches, he added.

The Varela Project happens to be one of the most inspiring democracy movements in the world today. It is being led by a Cuban dissident named Oswaldo Payá, who has spent his life trying to topple Castro's regime. Payá realized early on that the dictatorship would never be overthrown by a direct Bay of Pigs-style military assault, but it could be undermined by a peaceful grass-roots movement of Christian democrats, modeling themselves on Martin Luther King Jr.

[...] John Kerry's view? As he told Oppenheimer, the Varela Project "has gotten a lot of people in trouble . . . and it brought down the hammer in a way that I think wound up being counterproductive."

Imagine if you are a Cuban political prisoner rotting in a jail, and you learn that the leader of the oldest democratic party in the world thinks you're being counterproductive. Kerry's comment is a harpoon directed at the morale of Cuba's dissidents.

Imagine sitting in Castro's secret police headquarters and reading that statement. The lesson you draw is that crackdowns work. Throw some dissidents in jail, and the man who might be president of the United States will blame the democrats for being provocative.

Imagine if in the 1980's Ronald Reagan had called Andrei Sakharov or Natan Sharansky or Lech Walesa or Vaclav Havel "counterproductive" because, after all, what they did spawned crackdowns, too.

If there's anything we've learned over the past 20 years it is the power of moral suasion to buck up dissidents and undermine tyrannical regimes. And yet Kerry seems to have decided that other priorities come first.

Over the past several months, Kerry and his advisers have signaled that they would like to take American foreign policy in a more "realist" direction. That means, as Kerry told the editors of The Washington Post, playing down the idea of promoting democracy and focusing narrowly instead on national security. That means, as Kerry advisers told Joshua Micah Marshall in The Atlantic, pursuing a foreign policy that looks more like the one Brent Scowcroft designed for the first Bush administration.

We have learned that, in Kurdistan, the democratic left has turned out to be especially strong. And we have learned that, in some of the world's liberal democracies, other democratic leftists couldn't care less. "They shall not pass" was the slogan of the left in the Spanish Civil War. "Yes, they will," is the slogan of Spanish socialism today. Iraqi success, as much as Iraqi suffering, turns out to be invisible in the modern world.

Russia gave the Bush administration intelligence after the September 11 attacks that suggested Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was preparing attacks in the United States, President Vladimir Putin said Friday.

Putin said he couldn't comment on how critical the Russians' information was in the U.S. decision to invade Iraq. He said Russia didn't have any information that Saddam's regime had actually been behind any terrorist acts.

"After Sept. 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, the Russian special services, the intelligence service, received information that officials from Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States and outside it against the U.S. military and other interests," Putin said.

IN A PAIR of interim staff reports, the Sept. 11 commission yesterday gave the fullest and most detailed report on the planning of the attacks that the American public has received to date. Yet showing a peculiar instinct for the capillaries rather than the jugular, part of the public debate immediately focused on a single passing point that is no kind of revelation at all: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." Administration foes seized on this sentence to claim that Vice President Cheney has been lying, as recently as this week, about a purported relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. The accusation is nearly as irresponsible as the Bush administration's rhetoric has been.

The importance of the two new reports lies not in the clarification of any supposed Iraq link but in the new details that fill in and correct the state of the public's knowledge of the attacks themselves. Osama bin Laden, we learn, has not actually financed al Qaeda himself and never received his famed $300 million inheritance; al Qaeda, rather, "relied primarily on a fundraising network developed over time." Sept. 11 was initially planned as an even more ambitious attack -- involving 10 planes and targets on both coasts. Osama bin Laden was directly involved in key aspects of planning and target selection. There was division within al Qaeda's leadership as to whether the plan should go forward. And internal disagreement among the conspirators at times threatened its success. The reports offer the first substantive look at what key al Qaeda detainees such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh have been telling their interrogators, and it sheds light as well on the likely role of accused conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. The commission, in short, is adding a good deal of new information to the discussion and usefully reprocessing existing data.

All of which makes the flap over Mr. Cheney's statements a bit frustrating. The administration has not recently suggested that Iraq was behind Sept. 11. Nor, in fact, did the commission yesterday contradict what Mr. Cheney actually said -- and President Bush backed up -- earlier this week: that there were "long-established ties" between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Rather, the commission reported that a "senior Iraqi intelligence officer" met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan in 1994 and that contacts continued after he relocated to Afghanistan. Captured al Qaeda operatives, the report notes, have "adamantly denied" a connection with Iraq, and the famed meeting in Prague between Sept. 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence operative appears never to have happened. Indeed, there is no evidence of operational support for the group by Iraq, the commission staff argues; al Qaeda's requests apparently went unanswered. That said, the commission has not denied that there were contacts over a protracted period.

miércoles, junio 16, 2004

The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks found "no credible evidence" of a link between Iraq and al-Qaida in attacks against the United States, contradicting President Bush's assertion that such a connection was among the reasons it was necessary to topple Saddam Hussein.

In a report based on research and interviews by the commission staff, the panel said that Osama bin Laden explored possible cooperation with Saddam even though he opposed the Iraqi leader's secular regime.

The head of the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services, Undersecretary-General Dileep Nair, has been accused of promoting and recruiting people in ways that are not consistent with U.N. rules and regulations. Also, a senior investigator has been suspended and there have been accusations of financial and sexual misconduct.

The scrutiny of Nair and his division comes at a delicate time, as the United Nations is under intense scrutiny for alleged abuse of the Iraqi oil-for-food program. In fact, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (search) is the U.N. agency charged with looking into any abuses within the United Nations and that includes oil-for-food.

Nair has been accused of covering up abuses of the oil-for-food program. So far, his office has carried out 55 internal audits of the process that before the U.S.-led war against Saddam Hussein's regime allowed Iraqi oil to be sold so food could be purchased for Iraqis.

Other allegations of impropriety include charges that some inside the OIOS received financial kickbacks in return for promoting people and that some people were promoted in exchange for sexual favors.

One group within the United Nations that has raised concerns about Nair and his office is the United Nations Staff Union. In April, the group called on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (search) to establish an independent investigation of the Office of Internal Oversight Services.

Ya lo comentaba Arthur Chrenkoff a propósito del enfoque de la Associated Press ("European voters punished leaders in Britain, Italy and the Netherlands for getting involved in Iraq - but also turned their ire on the war's chief opponents German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac over local issues, projections showed Sunday."):

Isn't it nice how the pro-war leaders are punished for their pro-war stance, whereas anti-war leaders are punished over "local issues"? There obviously aren't any local issues in Great Britain, Italy and the Netherlands, but plenty in Germany and France.

"So let's see if we have this straight: When pro-war parties do badly in elections, it's because voters are antiwar. When antiwar parties do badly--as in Germany and France--it's because of . . . well, who knows?"

domingo, junio 13, 2004

With less than three weeks to go before sovereignty returns to Iraq, American and Iraqi officials are saying that much of the transfer has already happened.

The new interim Iraqi government has been formed, the old governing council has been dissolved and the majority of the ministries, including some crucial ones like oil, transportation and foreign affairs, have been turned over to Iraqi management. Meanwhile, both American advisers and Iraqi leaders said their roles had already shifted, with Iraqis running day-to-day affairs and Americans dispensing advice — and dollars.

Walid Saleh, planning director for the Water Resources Ministry, said his ministry used to be controlled by a team of six American water experts. Now, Mr. Saleh said, these advisers have become "consultants."

"They work for us," Mr. Saleh explained. "They are very good technicians and they give us expertise. But we make the decisions."

Five men armed with M-16 rifles raided the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) offices in the camp on Friday to protest that the new houses were two small. The gunmen threatened to harm the UN staff if their demands for larger houses were not met.

Residents of the Jenin camp are complaining that their new houses, replacing those destroyed in Israeli incursions, are not big enough, said Sami Mshasha, a spokesman for UNRWA in Jerusalem.

Sources in the camp said they did not know to which group the gunmen belonged, although some residents identified them as members of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah.

This was the third attack of its kind on UN offices and crew in the Jenin camp in the past six months. Residents had complained that the construction work was too slow and that senior Palestinian Authority officials had stolen parts of the donations from the international community to the camp.

One of the attackers complained that the 180 square meter apartment he had been given was too small for him and his wife. "Soon we will have children and this apartment would be too small," he told the UN staff.

The anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr on Friday endorsed the new interim Iraqi government and appeared to urge his followers to honor a week-old cease-fire that has been frayed by continuing violence.

A senior aide to Mr. Sadr, Sheik Jabir al-Khafaji, used a sermon during Friday Prayers in the Sadr stronghold of Kufa, 120 miles south of here, to announce that Mr. Sadr now approved of the interim government he had previously mocked and that he wanted its leaders to set a timetable for the departure of occupation forces.

" 'From now on, I beg you to start afresh for Iraq for the sake of peace and safety,' " Sheik Khafaji quoted Mr. Sadr as saying. " 'We have to avoid pushing humiliation and aggression on others and go forward with the independence of Iraq and not respond to the occupiers.' "

Those words represent a radical reversal of Mr. Sadr's past position. They could also represent an effort by Mr. Sadr to become involved in the politics of the nation, rather than continue as a leader of a 10-week-old insurgent struggle.

The oil-for-food programme was the largest humanitarian project in UN history. Following the fall of Saddam, evidence has emerged indicating fraud and corruption on an equally historic scale.

Mr Soussan, a programme co-ordinator for the programme from 1997 until 2000, when he resigned, recently testified before a US congressional panel investigating the scandal, one of several probes under way in Washington, New York and Baghdad.

Mr Soussan, a Dane, found many senior UN staff did not believe in their own mission.

"To them, the containment of Saddam Hussein was not a priority. They saw things through a humanitarian lens: that some countries are dictatorships, well, so be it, and the Iraqi people deserve better than being treated this way."

[...] Mr Soussan does not deny the pain caused by sanctions from the first Gulf war in 1991 to 1996, before oil-for-food sales began. A quarter of a million children died, by conservative estimates.

But during those five years, it was Saddam who refused offers to sell his oil and import humanitarian goods under UN supervision. "[He was] banking that images of dying babies would eventually force the international community to lift the sanctions altogether," Mr Soussan told Congress.

By 2000, there was no limit on the amount of oil Saddam was allowed to sell, and few limits on the civilian goods he was allowed to buy.

[...]The UN turned a blind eye to signs that Saddam was bribing cronies at home and abroad with black market oil vouchers, and was skimming billions from funds meant for food and medicine, demanding secret, 10 per cent "kickbacks" on humanitarian contracts.

The UN recently claimed it "learned of the 10 per cent kickback scheme only after the end of major combat operations" in 2003.

A lie, said Mr Soussan, recalling the hapless Swedish company that called in 2000, seeking UN help after being asked to pay kickbacks. The Swedes' plea was quickly lost in red tape and inter-office turf wars. After a "Kafka-esque" flurry of internal memos, the Swedes were told to complain to their own government.

[...] "If the UN had just stood up once, held a high-level press conference, and said, 'We think the Iraqi government is cheating its people', then the UN would not be in the mess it is now," he said. "It would then be an accuser, rather than the accused."

viernes, junio 11, 2004

Russian President Vladimir Putin stepped into the U.S. political campaign on Thursday, saying the Democrats had "no moral right" to criticize President Bush over Iraq.

The Kremlin leader, answering a reporter's question in Sea Island, Georgia, suggested that the Democrats were two-faced in criticizing Bush on Iraq since it had been the Clinton administration that authorized the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia by U.S. and NATO forces.

[...] He went on: "I am deeply convinced that President Bush's political adversaries have no moral right to attack him over Iraq because they did exactly the same.

"It suffices to recall Yugoslavia. Now look at them. They don't like what President Bush is doing in Iraq."

Russia was adamantly opposed to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, as it has been to the U.S.-led military operation Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.

U.S. and Taliban officials met secretly in Frankfurt almost a year before the Sept. 11 attacks to discuss terms for Afghanistan to hand over Osama bin Laden, according to a German television documentary.

But no agreement was reached and no further negotiations took place before the suicide hijackings in 2001.

ZDF television quoted Kabir Mohabbat, an Afghan-American businessman, as saying he tried to broker a deal between the Americans and the purist Islamic Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, who were sheltering bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.

He quoted the Taliban foreign minister, Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil, as saying: "You can have him whenever the Americans are ready. Name us a country and we will extradite him."

A German member of the European Parliament, Elmar Brok, confirmed to Reuters that he had helped Mohabbat in 1999 to establish initial contact with the Americans.

"I was told (by Mohabbat) that the Taliban had certain ideas about handing over bin Laden, not to the United States but to a third country or to the Court of Justice in The Hague," Brok said.

"The message was: 'There is willingness to talk about handing over bin Laden', and the aim of the Taliban was clearly to win the recognition of the American government and the lifting of the boycott," he said, referring to the international isolation of the Taliban.

Four Arab men posing as journalists were arrested this week when explosives residue was detected on them as they tried to enter the Baghdad headquarters of the U.S.-led administration, a senior U.S. army officer said.

The officer, a top security official in the compound which hosts news conferences given by senior U.S. and Iraqi officials and houses the U.S. consulate, said explosives were found in the men's hotel room after the arrests on Sunday.

They were posing as employees of an international television company and carried fake identification cards and were trying to drive a van into the compound when they were arrested, he said.